HIS WRITINGS 171 



they may find on every hand models ready for their use. Two 

 citations from the introductory pages of Lindley's classic, The 

 Theory and Practice of Horticulture, must suffice to exemplify 

 his incisive style Le style c'est I'homme, and Lindley the man 

 hated circumlocution and had no time to waste "there are, 

 doubtless, many men of cultivated or idle minds who think 

 waiting upon Providence much better than any attempt to 

 improve their condition by the exertion of their reasoning 

 faculties. For such persons books are not written " ; and again, 

 with reference to the divorce in current literature between 

 theory and practice, " Horticulture is by these means rendered 

 a very complicated subject, so that none but practical gardeners 

 can hope to pursue it successfully ; and like all empirical things, 

 it is degraded into a code of peremptory precepts." 



Publications. " The Theory and Practice of Horticulture? 



Though many aspects of Lindley's work must perforce be 

 treated of in briefest form no sketch could have the slenderest 

 value which did not take into account his chief works, The 

 Theory and Practice of Horticulture, The Vegetable Kingdom, 

 and the Botanical Register ; nor from a survey no matter how 

 brief may reference to his contributions to our knowledge of 

 orchids be omitted. 



The value of Lindley's great work on The Theory and 

 Practice of Horticulture may be best gauged by the fact that as 

 a statement of horticultural principles it is the best book extant. 

 Though the botanist of the present day finds on perusing this 

 work that physiological knowledge in 1840 was in a singularly 

 crude state, and may rejoice at the rapid progress of discovery 

 since the time when Lindley's book was written, yet the fact 

 remains that few, if any, men at the present day could make 

 a better statement of the physiological principles underlying 

 practical horticulture than that presented by John Lindley. 



Indeed it is a strange fact, and one worthy of the attention 

 of our physiologists, that the gardeners are still endeavouring 

 to puzzle out for themselves the reasons for their practices 

 unaided by the physiologists. An interesting illustration of 



